


Prints

by Lepord257



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 15:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lepord257/pseuds/Lepord257
Summary: When a person you have the potential of forming a meaningful bond with touches you for the first time, they leave a colorful handprint on your skin.Carolina has eight





	1. Allison

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short thing I've been working on while the next Two Houses chapter gets edited

Carolina’s first soulmark can’t be seen. It’s on the back of her head obscured first by blonde hair, and later bright red. It’s black she knows, and warped by how much she’s grown.

Her father told her the story enough times that it’s burned into her memory. She’d only been a few seconds old and the nurse handed her to her mother, showed her how to support the head. The abruptness with which she’d stopped screaming had terrified everyone -- until her tiny hand left its own cyan mark on Alison’s collarbone and everyone understood.

She doesn’t have one from her dad. She doesn’t know what to think about that anymore.


	2. York

She doesn’t get her second soulmark until she’s an adult, a week before she first sets foot on the Mother of Invention for the first time. She’s on shore leave, spending it in The Greasy Snifter, a bar that’s as much of a dive as the name implies.

A game or so into what’s promising to be a lucrative night of pool hustling, a man sidles up to the table and flashes a grin. “You could sink that one if you don’t hit it too hard.” He leans against the table just shy of her personal space. “I could show you if you want.”

Adorable. He’s trying to flirt. She’d bet all the money she’s about to scam out of these people that his next move will be to stand behind her and guide the pool stick himself. He’s lucky he’s cute.

Carolina tilts her head and gives him a grin of her own. He takes this as permission and, yup, moves to stand behind her. His left hand reaches for the pool stick, his right brushes the middle of her back-

_ His heart is racing but he won’t let it show. She’s too intriguing with her too-practiced fumbles with the cue ball and calluses that can only come from- _

Carolina lurches backwards, knocking his arm away. He raises his hands in surrender, which does nothing to stop the first that finds his face a moment later. The mystery man, her  _ soulmate, _ is laid out on the floor and Carolina should leave before someone throws her out, but she’s standing frozen to the floor as he gingerly pokes at the cyan she left on his cheek.

“Well,” he says, somewhat slurred. “Nice to meet you.”


	3. Wash

She gets her third soulmark 10 days after her second. She stands with the first round of Freelancer recruits before her father in UNSC issued workout gear telling herself the butterflies in her stomach are anticipation, not nervousness. Her father -- no, the Director -- calls her and another recruit forward. She misses his name, but catches the instructions. Hand to hand combat until one of them taps out. No holds barred.

The recruit grins at her, bouncing on his toes while she settles into a ready stance. “This is exciting.” He hasn’t even brought his arms up, he just keeps bouncing. “Carolina, huh? I’m Washington. I guess the Director already said that, but-”

“Begin.”

Carolina moves forward, plants her foot between his and brings her elbow towards his head as she sweeps her foot in the opposite direction. Washington throws himself to the side under her elbow to avoid being knocked off his feet, coming out of a painful looking combat roll on his knees. Carolina rolls her eyes and he takes the opportunity to scramble to his feet.

Washington puts his guard up this time. Better late than never, she supposes, but in a real fight any mistake could lead to mission failure. He’ll have to do better if he expects to survive.

He comes for her this time, throwing a basic, if well executed, punch. She grabs his arm, pulling him forward, and brings her other arm across his neck, sending him tumbling back to the floor. Washington seems to forget all of his training, yelping when she grabs him, and flailing to grab at her as he falls instead of doing anything to protect his head. It’s not until he grabs her calf that realizes why.

_ His hip stings where he hit the floor, his arm where she grabbed it has got to be bruising, but none of that matters. Cyan on his arm like the gold on his shoulder blade and the white on his hip, and the lights are too bright to look directly up at her but that doesn’t matter either because- _

Carolina wrenches his leg from his grip and puts her boot on his chest. “Tap out.”

Washington stares up at her, dazed. She pushes down on his chest. He wheezes. And taps out.


	4. Maine

Carolina gets her fourth soulmark when she inspires the rule against armor mods in the field without a line back to command. The mission was simple: infiltrate an insurrectionist base and apprehend their leader. Infiltration was simple. Apprehension was not.

York had managed to set off a silent alarm when breaking into the base’s inner sanctum, so by the time they reached the command center all the high ranking insurrectionists,  _ including their target, _ were cleared out.

_ “Damnit!” _ she swore, kicking a filing cabinet hard enough to dent it.

“Now, Carolina-” York strolled up to the screen mounted on the wall and prodded at the keyboard. “-No need for that just yet.”

“If you hadn’t set off that alarm-”

Maine gave a warning grunt from where he’d stationed himself beside the door. Carolina glared at him. York waved him off.

“It’s all good, big guy. Here C, look.”

Whatever York had done to the computer, it was now showing feeds from security cameras all around the base. A few were only showing static. Judging from the labels, those were the ones they’d knocked down on their way in. The ones that caught Carolina's attention, however, were the ones showing their target sprinting in the direction of the Warthogs.

She does the math in her head. The target is closer to the Warthogs than they are to the target. Catching up on foot would be impossible, but with her new speedboost…

“I’m going after him. Meet me by the armory.”

“Carolina, wait!”

But she’s already gone. The world bends around her, she’s going to catch him, bring him to the Director, keep her rank-

She rounds the corner and the world snaps back into place. Floor becomes wall becomes ceiling and the last thing she sees is the armor on her right leg shattered in pieces before her mind helpfully dumps her into a waking dream about a cartoon she’d watched as a kid.

She’s sitting on a counter as a bright pink pony bustles around the kitchen singing about cupcakes and parties and bubblegum candy. Carolina taps out a counter rhythm on her thighs, tries to identify the source of the discomfort keeping her from joining in. She was doing something. Helping with the party? That must be it. She’s in a bakery after all. It’s important that there’s enough cupcakes-

_ Even with armor, she’s light as a feather. He’s glad she’s still conscious but he wishes she’d stop talking. Off-key humming and rambling disjointed sentence fragments about parties and ponies make him wish there was a way to check for head trauma without taking off her helmet. She’s vulnerable enough with her missing greaves and torn survival suit. _

Carolina’s leg slips, forcing Maine’s hand from the back of her knee to her calf. She takes the opportunity to pass out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They say write what you know, so I wrote about what happens when you fuck your leg up real bad. And that's nonsense waking dreams about fictional characters. Go figure.


	5. C.T.

By the time she gets her fifth soulmate, Carolina has the sneaking suspicion that she’s soulmates with the whole damn program. It’s late, late enough that she’s too tired to be surprised to see someone else in the mess hall lit up by a datapad, fingers laced around a paper travel mug.

Whatever. Carolina’s just here for coffee and a granola bar and then she’s back to the training room. Not her business if someone’s up too late reading fanfiction or something.

The other night owl blinks up at her as she makes a beeline for the kitchen. “Carolina?” she asks, squinting up at her.

It takes a few seconds for her tired brain to put together the voice and half-lit features. “C.T.? What are you doing up?”

C.T. turns off the datapad screen, plunging the room into darkness. Then immediately turns it back on so they can actually see each other. “Nothing.”

“Fascinating.” Carolina starts towards the kitchens again.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Coffee?” Carolina zeros in on the paper cup C.T. nudges in her direction. The kitchen  _ is _ all the way over there…

“I know you’ve been frustrated with the leaderboard lately- Wait! There’s a point to this.” Carolina glares. She doesn’t sit down, but she does take the coffee. C.T. must consider this good enough, because she continues. “It doesn’t seem fair, right? And even more than that. Why have a leaderboard in the first place?” Coffee was officially not worth this. But she  _ was _ taking it. Carolina turned on her heel. “Carolina-”

_ She’s an unearthly amalgamation of too-dark shapes and washed out blue in the dim light of the datapad. Her hair is more purple than red and she looks so tired. As tired as  _ she _ feels. It’s not fair that things are like this but maybe if she’d stay, if she’d listen- _

Carolina wrenches her wrist out of C.T.’s grasp and stomps out of the mess hall. 

The next time she sees her is the fight in the scrapyard.


	6. Caboose

Her sixth soulmark is more of a surprise than her second one. She’s stuck on some colony planet, Ziishe she thinks but she could be wrong, with Wash and the Reds and Blues as the UNSC figures out what to do with them now that Freelancer has been exposed and the Director killed. From the number of reporters emailing her about exclusives, she’s fairly certain it won’t be prison. She’s not sure what she’d do if it was. Run maybe. It’s been a long time since she had a plan that didn’t involve the Director.

Her stomach rumbles, reminding her of a plan she  _ does  _ have: dinner with the Reds and Blues. The boys were taking full advantage of the amenities a civilized planet has to offer. They’d been eating at a new restaurant every meal, half for the fun of it and half because they’d been asked not to return to everywhere they’d gone so far. She’s fairly certain Grif was banned from the on-base mess hall.

She’d stayed behind, eating alone at a tiny 24-hour diner the boys had yet to destroy. She’d kept to herself under the assumption that they wouldn’t want anything to do with her now that the mess with Freelancer was over. She wasn’t their friend, even if Epsilon had yet to leave her implants. But this afternoon Wash had shown up outside her door with the message that if she didn’t join them for burgers at The Steady, she’d be making Caboose cry.

_ Good,  _ Epsilon had huffed inside her head, but she’d felt his pang of guilt. So The Steady it was.

Being out of armor and surrounded by people after all these years made her hair stand on end. Every passing stranger was a potential threat. Every skyscraper was a potential sniper’s nest. Every inch of her not covered by plating and kevlar a weak point.

_ Christ dude, could you be any more paranoid? _ Carolina rolled her eyes, even as she felt the tingling in her fingers nudging her to unclench her fists and a sensation in her chest like the need to cough that was Epsilon reminding her to breathe.  _ Heads up, it’s three buildings down and to your right. _

She sees it. Or, more accurately, she sees them. The only person she really recognizes out of armor is Wash, doing his level best to discourage what looks to be the beginnings of a game of chicken in the street beside the restaurant. One of them, an enormous man with a mop of curls and a busted nose spots her and waves excitedly. The name ‘Caboose’ floats to the forefront of her mind and she pushes a fleeting feeling of gratitude towards Epsilon.

Fleeting, because Caboose shouts her name at the top of his lungs and charges. Carolina has just enough time for Epsilon to panic before he sweeps her off her feet in the sort of bearhug she hadn’t gotten since Maine.

_ CAROLINA IS HERE!! And CHURCH!!! We’re gonna have BURGERS and MILKSHAKES and OHMYGODTHISISTHEBEST!!! _

Carolina’s hand finds Caboose’s back -- to return the hug or push him away she isn’t sure -- and he gasps and drops her. Caboose’s internal, shouted monologue is abruptly replaced by Epsilon’s internal, shouted monologue. Her head will never be the same again.

“OH MY GOD, CAROLINE! WE’RE BEST FRIENDS!”


	7. Grif

She gets her seventh mark not long after her sixth. They’ve been on the Hand of Merope for all of two days when Tucker declares the resumption of “movie night”, which is apparently a tradition that exists. No one seems particularly keen on the idea until Simmons discovers the ship has access to Netflix, and then it becomes a five hour argument over what to watch that culminates in three broken fingers, a busted piano, and a siege of the rec room. Carolina resolves the siege by throwing everyone out and queuing up Wonder Woman.   


Everyone else trickles in over the next twenty minutes, settling on bean bags, armchairs, and each other. Grif and Simmons arrive last, Simmons all but perched on the armrest of the couch Carolina claimed, as far from her as possible without sitting on the floor. An image of her sending him flying over said couch and crashing into Sarge floats through the back of her mind, accompanied by the vague sensation of glee. Epsilon apparently enjoyed it as much as she had.

Grif is either over it or has no self-preservation because he flops into the middle seat between them. “Wonder Woman,” he crows.  _ “Nice.” _

The TV only gets knocked over once before they get to the gala scene. Carolina would be willing to count that as a success as far as movie experiences go, if it weren’t for Grif and Simmons constant bickering  _ right next to her. _

“It makes perfect sense!” Simmons snips, missing a whisper by a mile. “It’s a classic case of hiding in plain sight. Nobody would expect a sword to be hidden in a dress, so they assume it’s decoration.”

Epsilon drags the memory of throwing him across the couch back up with a vengeance.

“Even if that was a reasonable plan, which I’m not saying it was, it’s still not practical. Swords are sharp dude.”

Upending the popcorn bowl on Grif’s head would probably derail the rest of the night, but she has to admit the mental image is compelling. 

_ Coward. _

Shh.

“She’s a demigod! Demigods have different rules!”

“And the sword was made by demigods. Therefore-”

“Oh my god, shut up!” 

Carolina shoves at Grif blindly, her open palm hitting his stomach just above the popcorn bowl sitting on his lap. Astonishingly, he does. He also tenses, curling around her hand. She draws her hand back, maybe she’d hit too hard, but he moves faster, grabbing just above her left elbow and keeps her from pulling away.

_ Holy fuck! He hopes she doesn’t judo flip him for grabbing her or some shit because holy fuck! She probably won’t, soulmarks have different rules, but she also might because she’s Carolina and has he mentioned holy- _


	8. Sarge

When Carolina got her eighth soulmark the next morning, she’s not even surprised. She’s in the food court at the end of a table claimed by red and blue idiots who’ve claimed her as their own weighing the pros and cons of another plate of waffles when Sarge passes her on his way to the cereal bar. He’s saying something about lazy wastes of space to Simmons, who looks  _ far _ too awake for the hour. A flurry of memories that don’t belong to her confirms he is, in fact, the worst kind of morning person.

She raises her cup of coffee to them in greeting, and Sarge pats her on the shoulder in the same.

_ -more to keep track of, really? The boys seem content at- _

Carolina blinks, fighting down the urge to find a mirror to check her shoulder.  _ Dude _ , Epsilon says.  _ Caboose I can see. Grif  _ maybe _. But Sarge? _

Sarge returns with Simmons, and Carolina scoots over to make room for them. Simmons is still skittish from last night, but Sarge plops his tray down right next to her. Cereal goes everywhere. 

Carolina snorts. “Smooth.”

Sarge hurumpfs and accepts the napkins Simmons pulled from who knows where. Carolina pats him on the arm, taking the napkins from his hand when he stops mopping up the mess to stare at her.


End file.
